D.C.’s ‘invisible army’ for Christ

The Family, a little-known religious group, has been getting some unwanted publicity. What do they believe?

It’s the most well-connected religious organization that no one talks about. Formed in 1935 by an itinerant preacher, Norwegian immigrant Abraham Vereide, the Family has grown into “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government,” in the words of Family member and evangelical minister Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate conspirator. The Washington-based group counts many prominent politicians, mostly conservative Republicans, among its flock, and several members of Congress pay $600 a month to rent rooms in the group’s townhouse on C Street, near the U.S. Capitol. There are Family “prayer cells” in many federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Justice Department. The Family tries to maintain a low profile (see below), but was thrust into the headlines in recent weeks when it emerged that three politicians embroiled in sex scandals—South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering—are longtime members. Pickering, in fact, last week was accused in court papers of having trysts with his mistress in the C Street house.

Are all members politicians?

No. While members include Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, many business leaders and military officers are also involved. “We work with power where we can,” Doug Coe, 81, the group’s leader since 1969, said in a rare interview in 2002, “and build power where we can’t.” The Family’s only high-profile endeavor is the National Prayer Breakfast, at which world leaders gather each year in Washington for a morning of nondenominational worship; but the Family always stays in the background, and many participants have no idea that the group is even involved.

What does the Family believe?

Its theology is vague, elastic, and focused on power. The basic precepts came to Vereide in a vision in 1935, according to the group’s literature. Living in Seattle, he came to believe that union organizing in the city was communist-inspired. Jesus appeared to him in the form of the president of U.S. Steel, who told him to gather “key men”—prominent businessmen and political leaders—to beat back the unions in His name. Vereide’s recruiting efforts spread eastward, and in 1941 he arrived in Washington, where he began cultivating friendships with powerful people and setting up prayer groups. By then, Vereide was convinced that conventional Christianity had it backwards: Instead of ministering to the down-and-out, Jesus wanted believers to tend to the “up-and-out”—members of America’s elite who lacked intimacy with Jesus. In Vereide’s worldview, free-market capitalism is divinely ordained, and unions and regulations are a form of blasphemy.

What about personal morality?

It’s not the most important consideration. “The people involved in this association are the worst and the best,” Coe says. “Some are total despots, some are totally religious.” The mere fact that they are powerful means they have God’s favor, argues Coe, citing a line from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Scholar Jeff Sharlet, author of the authoritative book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, explains the theology this way: As long as the powerful develop a close relationship with Jesus, “then they will dispense blessings to those underneath them. It’s a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism.” The theology stems from Vereide’s belief than only “key men” can change the world, and only with Jesus’ guidance will they change it for the better. The Family believes in a “total Jesus,” who pervades every thought and action.

Does the Family excuse adultery and other sins?

Not exactly, but it considers the powerful to be accountable only to God and their peers, not to their constituents or the Constitution. Coe speaks often of the biblical King David, who slept with another man’s wife, then ordered the cuckolded husband into battle, effectively sentencing him to death. Yet despite his personal failings, David was one of God’s chosen, and his reign was a blessing to the Israelites. When Gov. Sanford invoked King David to explain why he wouldn’t resign over his adulterous relationship with an Argentine woman, “you could almost hear Doug’s voice,” says Sharlet, who considers the Family’s disregard for conventional morality “potentially very dangerous,” because it “leads you away from accountability to the public.”

Is the Family a threat?

Few in Washington seem too worried. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken part in Family activities despite her liberal politics, and has called Coe “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.” The first President Bush called Coe an “ambassador of faith.” Supporters also note that Family members helped convince President Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin to call for a worldwide day of prayer to usher in the Camp David Peace Accords. And members helped broker a 2001 peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Such successes, Family members say, demonstrate the group’s good intentions. “There’s nothing sinister here, no dark secrets,” says former Rep. Tony Hall of Ohio. “It’s the exact opposite of what Washington is about.”

Secrecy by design

Family members quickly learn that the first rule of the Family is not to talk about it. In 1966, Vereide, who referred to his following as an “invisible army,” decreed that the Family should “submerge the institutional image” of the group—a policy maintained by Coe. As Coe once said in a sermon, “the Family functions invisibly like the Mafia. The more you can make your organization invisible, the more influence it will have.” Family members organize themselves into small “cells” that are, in the group’s own words, “publicly invisible and privately identifiable.” Coe has expressed admiration for the way such leaders as Adolf Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, and Osama bin Laden organized followers into small groups that shared a “covenant.” With a covenant, he says, “two or three people can do anything.” Where those leaders went wrong, he says, was in not making their covenants in Jesus’ name.

(This is not Christianity as I learned it. I know this is a long post, but I couldn't decide what to leave out.)

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comments:

Can you imagine if there was a similar secretive organization of Gays (or Muslims, or African-Americans) which was dedicated to gaining access to power?!? The Straight White Male Establishment would totally freak out. But it's all fine and good when they do it...

You're right, Joy. A good bit of this is not Orthodox Christianity. I'm not comfortable with Coe's admiration of Hitler, et al. But it sounds like they don't have all that much influence and are bipartisan, so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about...

This is the underlying fear I've always had of religion - but I figured that if someone attempted it they would do it publicly and it would fail. But they did it in secret! And it has been around for a while. Scary. I wonder if the current scandals will blunt their influence. They don't seem to have a problem with it but a lot of us do.

The main problem of it all is lying and chting. I think that should not be forgiven, because it is soemthing that was thought and known by the person and had been going on for along time, so don t pleade innocent. The only other unforgivble things re killing, hurtin and depending on what stealing.

Pseudonymph: That's not the same "family". The story you referenced is about a nutcase cult in Kansas. Unfortunately, they give Christians a bad name in a bigger way because they love they camera and will. not. shut. up.

They're actually worse than that. It's the Westboro Baptist Church who are hate mongers and stop just short of committing hate crimes. In addition to picketing funerals of gay people with placards that say horrible things at a time when someone has lost a child, they also picket funerals of soldiers and victims of plane crashes for some reason I have never understood. They almost came to my town to picket the death of a soldier who was killed in Iraq. Fortunately, they didn't.

Here is the link to their website: http://www.godhatesfags.com

and here is a link to an explanation about them: http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/WBC/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=3&item=WBC

They are the KKK disguised as a church.

News of The Family is just now being uncovered. Under the guise of Christianity, they are a secret society who encourage and support each other to be greedy powerful men at the expense of anyone who gets in their way. They excuse affairs and who knows what else.

I don't want to forget other possibilities, though not well read yet on these claims....sometimes there are well intended organizations that powerful people take advantage of.The org itself ( and founder) might not have ulterior hate motives of any kind. the org may not be focused in making moral judgments on individual moralities.

I really wasn't referring directly to these families you are talking about. I just think there are well intended groups out there who are manipulated by strong individuals who kind of invade and take liberties "re-interpreting" what the founders intended.

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The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I cannot go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me; so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.What falls away is always. And is near.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I learn by going where I have to go.